THOUGH JUST A DAY PAST ITS SELL-BY, IT DOES SMELL A BIT IFFY.

FRIED DUMPLING

(I could qualify that by saying that AFB is a big fan of Jamaican food served out of mobile kiosks at funfairs in Stratford, but that would be needlessly specific; there is surely nothing more to a country than the cuisine its expats dole out to sunburned Brits off of paper plates.)

This review tackles not Jamaican food per se. Peanut juice, for example, has already been dealt with, and things like jerk chicken and curry goat are, sadly, outside of the remit of the present author, being as they are chopped up bits of innocent creatures. I would be intrigued to try ‘ground food’, but find this level of non-specificity mildly sinister. Rather, the topic of this review is the fried dumpling.

A fried dumpling is a big lump of dough, shoved into a deep fat fryer. That’s it. Simple as that. Bish, bash and the proverbial bosh.

Oh come on people. What the hell’s not to like? OK, so it likely rendered my arteries as tight and furry as Sooty’s arsehole. OK, so it basically tasted of nothing. OK, so it was served off of a paper plate out of a mobile kiosk at a funfair in Stratford. The fact remains: it was a big lump of dough, shoved into a deep fat fryer. No garnish. No sprigs of coriander. Nothing ‘drizzled’ on it. No side of consommé, or fricassee, or confit of wank. Just a big, F-off lump of dough. Deep fried.

Ladies and gentleman: if anything epitomizes the entirety of AFB’s ethos, it is the fried dumpling.